The Edinburgh Futures Institute (EFI) had a series of postgraduate programmes in development, approximately two years away from admitting their first student cohorts. These programmes were being built according to a progressive vision of the future of higher education, and one of their key ambitions was that they would be highly collaborative, involving external partner organisations. 

We were approached to help the EFI initiate a conversation and relationship with over 40 potential partner organisations. In which they would help shape these programmes by sharing their perspectives on the skills that would be needed by future graduates, and considering new, interesting models for collaborating with the EFI.

The Edinburgh Futures Institute (EFI) is part of the University of Edinburgh and is developing progressive and non-traditional approaches to higher education. This includes giving students more autonomy over their learning, more choice over whether to study online or on-campus, promoting interdisciplinarity, and working collaboratively with a large range of partners. 

‍Edinburgh Futures Institute Website

The project was split into two distinct phases, with separate objectives and engagement formats. 

Across the first phase, we worked closely with five of the postgraduate programmes currently in development, facilitating a workshop for each programme. These workshops invited representatives from relevant external organisations to share their thoughts about the skills and capabilities that graduates of the future are likely to need in their respective sectors. Invitees then used this as a springboard to give constructive feedback on the vision for each programme.

The second phase focussed on developing relationships with these external organisations, while also exploring the possible formats for student/partner projects, and generating novel ideas around how the EFI could collaborate with partners.

This phase was conducted in the early stages of the Covid-19 lockdown, and we were keen to move away from an online workshop format, instead developing an engagement that was sensitive to the time pressure and work schedule disruptions many were facing. Through developing a bespoke website, we hosted an online asynchronous engagement, where people could contribute as little or as much of their time as they had available.

To conclude, we ran a handover workshop with EFI staff working on the postgraduate programmes, in which they had to use project insights and recommendations to identify and take ownership over specific action points.